Fire Inspections
Fire Inspections are a very important part of our duties to ensure fire and life safety standards are met for our business, manufacturing, and assembly occupancies. We also perform an assessment of the building for information pertaining to the structure, type of business, processes and materials on site which provides our firefighters important information when responding to any potential incidents.
Intervals of inspections vary according to the type of occupancy. Low hazard occupancies such as an office building may be inspected on an 18-month interval, compared to a moderate hazard occupancy such as manufacturing may be on a 12-month interval. An assembly occupancy or hotel occupancy is considered a high life safety occupancy and would be inspected at least annually. Besides our regular inspections, we also respond to complaint investigations.
Plan Review: We also participate in the plan review for new buildings or expansions to assure they will meet current code requirements. As well as assist in acceptance tests for fire and life safety systems.
Fire Investigations: Fire investigations are performed after a fire has occurred. The purpose of the investigation is to determine the cause and origin of the fire. This is a very important aspect of our duties to determine if a fire was intentional or accidental in nature. In the event of an intentional arson fire, we investigate the scene, collect evidence left from the fire, and prepare a case file to assist law enforcement and the prosecutor’s office with criminal prosecution.
Accidental causes can include accidental human involvement, nature, or a malfunction of equipment or appliances. In such cases of malfunctioning, the information attained can assist an insurance company in recouping its loss and can provide important consumer information of product recalls. These investigations also include fire involving vehicles, wildfires, and other types of equipment.
Emergency Response: Our Fire Inspector / Investigators are certified firefighters and emergency medical technicians with many years of emergency response experience. Besides their regular duties they do assist in more urgent and larger scale emergency incidents. This is important as we often receive multiple emergency alarms at the same time. If the duty crews are busy on other incidents our inspectors can step in along with our on-call personnel and handle additional calls to insure prompt response to these additional calls.
Inspectors are also required to train 192 hours annually. This training covers EMS, hazmat, and homeland security response issues, just to name a few.
Training and Certification: Our fire inspectors are required to be a Michigan State Certified Fire Inspector, as well as certified by the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association). Hundreds of hours go into becoming certified as well as required on-going continual education classes to insure we are up to date on the latest code changes and trends in the industry.
Our fire investigators are trained and certified by both the Michigan State Police and the International Association of Arson Investigators. Here in Cascade we are fortunate to have two Certified Fire and Explosive Investigators. These certifications also required hundreds of hours of training to be certified, as well as on-going continuing educational training.
Fire Prevention: Educating the community in fire and life safety is a high priority. Whether it is in schools, business, or in our retirement communities, the best way for us to keep our citizens safe to educate them to help prevent fires from occurring. We offer education programs for fire safety in the home and school. We also offer fire extinguisher training for business.
The fire prevention team has a vital role in keeping the citizens and visitors of Cascade Township safe through prevention, education, and enforcement.